Pittsburgh surgeon gives insight into treating traumatic injuries

Dr. Al Philp served in Afghanistan, Iraq

The chaos, panic and stress felt near the finish line of the Boston Marathon brings pressure and challenges for the medical personnel who respond, according to Dr. Al Philp, a trauma surgeon at Allegheny General Hospital.

Philp, who served time in Afghanistan and Iraq as a trauma surgeon, said, "It's no longer 'everybody gets everything we can do, and the sickest get treated first' and that sort of thing. You have to look at people and say, 'how could I stretch this out over 25 people?'"

Philp said that in a civilian setting, such as Boston, the challenges are even greater.

"The difference is when you have their tearful wife who's also sort of there, and then their kids and six more injured people next to you. The setting is very different than when you do this in training," Philp said. He told Channel 4 Action News' Marcie Cipriani that the medical personnel have to focus and put their feelings aside, to make it through.

Philp said knowing that the injuries are the result of an explosive makes saving lives dangerous.

"In the truest sense of the word, this is an improvised explosive device, an IED, which we saw a lot of in the military. They're cheap. You can make them out of almost anything. You don't have to have a lot of technical knowledge to assemble these. They often look like something common. They don't look like a rocket," said Philp.

Philp said the damage these explosives bring is far worse than what doctors see with injuries from a crash, a shooting or a stabbing.

"You're thrown through the air, you crash in to a wall, which then collapses on top of you, and at the same time, all the little pieces of the casings or the ball bearings or the nails that are in there have gone flying through the air and entered various parts of you, so its this terrible combination," Philp said.

For a trauma surgeon who has seen catastrophic injury before in the emergency room and in the field, the devastation and damage is still startling.

"At the end of a race, you expect to get a glass of Gatorade and a T-shirt and talk to your friends. You don't expect to see an injured person or, God forbid, a limb flying, or the terrible things you see in this kind of setting," Philp said. "It's truly unbelievable in the strictest definition of the word."

Copyright 2013 byWTAE.com All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.